One session at AWS Community Day Bangalore 2025 in May fundamentally altered my perspective on database scalability. Senior Solution Architect Ankit Kapoor of TiDB gave a very enlightening session titled "From Startup to Scale-up: Your Database’s Growth Journey."

This is for you if you’ve ever had trouble with database scaling.

The Problem We All Face

To be honest, conventional relational databases function flawlessly until they break down. Ankit outlined the difficulties faced by the majority of expanding businesses:

Manual Configuration Nightmares

Shard mapping needs to be configured manually.

Cross-shard searches add needless complexity to application code.

Under heavy load, concurrency constraints result in row-level locking.

Several housekeeping tasks take up important time.

Vertical Scaling Hits a Wall

A bottleneck is created by mutex contention.

Growth is restricted by shared resource bottlenecks.

Commodity hardware is plagued with OOM problems and low CPU utilization.

Performance Issues That Hurt

Writes continue to be bottlenecked, but read operations scale

It is only possible to achieve eventual consistency.

Analytical queries don’t work well with row-based storage.

Semantic search moves slowly.

Does that sound familiar? The majority of us have been there, which is why.

What is Distributed SQL?

This is the fascinating part. Distributed SQL is an advanced database architecture that blends the greatest features of both worlds; it’s not just another catchphrase. It offers both the horizontal scale of NoSQL databases and the transactional guarantees of relational databases, as Ankit clarified.

Take a moment to consider that. Scalability is maintained while achieving ACID compliance.

Enter TiDB: The Open Source Solution

I was drawn to TiDB because of its outstanding credentials:

Founded in 2015 and 100% open source

38,000+ GitHub Stars showing strong developer interest

800+ Contributors building and improving it

10,000+ Adopters worldwide

8,000+ Slack Users in an active community

Big names like Pinterest, CAPCOM, Conga, Bolt, and Ninja trust TiDB with their production workloads. Over 4,000+ enterprise adopters across 25 countries use it daily.

How TiDB Works: Architecture Made Simple

Ankit divided the architecture of TiDB into four primary parts:

Compute Layer

Handles SQL processing and query optimization

MySQL compatible (huge win for migration!)

Row Store

Distributed key - value storage

Perfect for OLTP workloads with strong consistency

Columnar Store

Enables real-time analytics on transactional data

Uses a columnar storage engine for analytical queries

Placement Driver (PD)

Manages metadata

Balances data distribution across nodes automatically

The beauty? Storage and computation are entirely distinct. This implies that you can scale them on your own according to your requirements.

TiDB vs Traditional Databases: The Real Difference

Conventional databases employ a single-master configuration in which read replicas use transaction log replication to handle read traffic while one instance manages writes. It’s limiting, but it works.

This model is flipped by TiDB. While ensuring ACID transactions with excellent read consistency, several TiDB instances manage both reads and writes concurrently. The computation layer is stateless and scalable on its own, while the storage layer (TiKV) is horizontally scalable and supports many replicas.

What This Means for DBAs

Ankit emphasized how TiDB reduces operational headaches:

Horizontal Scaling: Automatic sharding and seamless scaling without the need for human intervention

99.99% Availability: Your data is kept accessible by auto-failover and self-healing.

Mixed Workloads: AI, analytical, and transactional workloads are all handled by a single database.

Strong Consistency: Strong data integrity and worldwide compliance in ACID transactions

Security: Enterprise-grade encryption both in-flight and at-rest

MySQL Compatibility: Easy migration path for existing MySQL users

Multi-Cloud: Deploy across your preferred cloud platforms

100% Open Source: Transparent, community-driven development

The Operational Simplicity Win

I was very impressed by TiDB’s integrated Grafana and Prometheus dashboards. Instant monitoring, performance measurements, and system health data straight out of the box, no further setup or configuration nightmare.

For teams without dedicated DevOps resources, this is a game-changer.

Three Deployment Options on AWS

TiDB offers flexibility based on your needs:

TiDB Cloud Serverless

Fully managed with effortless scalability

Pay-as-you-go pricing

99.99% availability (currently 99.9%)

Perfect for variable workloads, web applications, and microservices

TiDB Cloud Dedicated

Fully managed with high performance

99.99% availability

Subscription pricing starting at $2/hour with volume discounts

Ideal for mission-critical applications with heavy read/write operations

TiDB Self-Managed

Self-managed for maximum control

Custom pricing

Premium support available

Best for large enterprises with complex infrastructure needs

Conclusion

My understanding of database architecture has changed as a result of this session. For many years, traditional databases worked well for us, but contemporary applications require more. TiDB solves actual scalability issues without requiring you to give up on SQL or ACID guarantees.

It is a strong competitor due to its open-source nature and production-proven dependability at large corporations. TiDB should be included in your evaluation list if your present database is experiencing scaling issues or if you are designing a new system that must accommodate expansion.

AWS Community Day Bangalore still offers insightful, useful content from actual professionals addressing actual issues. Sessions like Ankit’s serve as a reminder of the importance of community gatherings since they provide us with solutions that we might not otherwise come across.

References

Event: AWS Community Day Bangalore 2025

Topic: Scaling Databases with TiDB

Date: May 23, 2025

Location: Conrad Benguluru

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